Cultural persistence and the ‘herbal medicine paradox’: evidence from European data

The use of herbal or traditional medicines has survived the proliferation of modern medicine. The phenomenon has been labeled as the ‘herbal medicines paradox’ (HMP). We study whether such HMP hypothesis can be explained by the persistence of attitudes across cultural boundaries. We undertake a secondary analysis of individual-level migration data to test the persistence of the use of herbal medicines in relation to norms in the person’s country of birth (or home country). We study the association between attitudes towards herbal medicine treatments of both first (N = 3630) and second-generation (N = 1618) immigrants in 30 European countries, and the average attitudes of their sending country origins. We find robust evidence of an association that is stronger for the second-generation migrants. We document a stronger effect among maternal than paternal lineages, as well as significant heterogeneity based on migrants’ country of origin. Our estimates are robust to different sample analysis. Our estimates are consistent with a cultural explanation for the HMP

Indentured: benefit deductions, debt recovery and welfare disciplining

The UK social security system performs an important role as a creditor and debt collector for many benefit claimants, with more affected by deductions than formal welfare conditionality or sanctions. Deductions, then, are central to understanding low‐income life in the UK. With that in mind, this paper draws on a mixed‐methods project to explore the policy rationale, administration and effects of benefit deductions at a particular moment of crisis. Through new analysis of statistical releases, I evidence increasing indebtedness and an Inverse Care Law, whereby UK social security performs worst for those who need it most. Drawing on qualitative longitudinal ethnographic fieldwork conducted at the height of the cost‐of‐living crisis, I also evidence how deductions affect the lives and trajectories of low‐income claimants over time. The analysis offered details how deductions weaponize debt, often in ways that financialise benefit claimants and their entitlements that prove counter‐productive to the stated policy objectives of deductions: worsening the poverty‐debt trap and pushing people (further) away from the labour market

The Irish in England

We use the universe of probate and vital registers from England between 1838 and 2018 to document the status of the Irish in England. We identify the “Irish” in the records as those individuals with distinctively Irish surnames. From at least the mid-nineteenth century to 2018, we find that the Irish in England have persisted as an underclass, being on average 50 percent poorer than the English. Infant mortality was about 25 percent higher for the Irish between the 1830s and the mid-twentieth century but has subsequently equalized. Sorting, both to urban areas and to the North of England, are important elements in the Irish experience. We discuss the potential roles of selective migration, social mobility, and discrimination in this and signpost directions for future research

Critical raw materials, the net-zero transition and the 'securitization' of the trade and climate change mitigation nexus: pinpointing environmental risks and charting a new path for transnational decarbonization

The exercise of environmental ‘leverage’ via trade-related measures and trade in environmental goods offers opportunities to tackle the climate crisis and advance transnational decarbonization. Inward-looking, adversarial, and short-term national security-centred approaches, however, are disrupting the trade and climate change mitigation linkage. This article employs the race for critical raw materials and US and EU strategies to promote the net-zero transition at the domestic level as case studies to illustrate the environmental pitfalls of the ‘securitization’ of the trade and climate change mitigation nexus. The article demonstrates that the pursuit of strategic dominance in key net-zero sectors, attempts to exclude systemic rivals and reshore supply chains, opportunistic forms of friendshoring and loose agreement on regulatory means jeopardize recourse to environmental ‘leverage’ and undermine decarbonization at both national and transnational levels. This analysis casts a light on the inherent tension between national security and climate change mitigation. Taking stock of these findings, the article advocates a radically different approach to the governance of the trade and climate change mitigation nexus

Public perceptions on net zero energy houses in Japan

For Japan, which has not operated nearly all of its nuclear power plants since 2011 and is dependent on thermal power generation, the introduction of renewable energy into homes is extremely important for the future formation of a sustainable society. However, the introduction of net zero energy house (ZEH) in detached houses, which account for 55% of all dwellings in Japan, has not progressed. To promote the introduction of ZEH, this study clarified the awareness of owners of detached houses regarding ZEH. We analyzed factors that influence such perception of solar photovoltaics (PV) technology using a 1000-sample online survey questionnaire. The survey was conducted in late January 2020 and included questions examining the public perception of solar installation and factors that were found to be important in previous research. We found that Japanese respondents who live in detached houses generally lack an understanding of renewables and that the level of interest in installing solar PV for the ZEH is low. We also found that awareness of renewables, such as knowing new energy policy and searching information on solar PV, is the critical factor of installing renewables. At the same time, most socio-demographic and neighborhood variables seem not to influence installing solar PV or other technologies for ZEH. This research will contribute to the Japanese government’s goal of strengthening education on renewable energy to promote ZEH

Homo anthropologicus: unexamined behavioural models in sociocultural anthropology

Inferences from ethnography in sociocultural anthropological arguments frequently rely on an unexamined model of the human mind and behaviour. Across a range of theoretical approaches, human thought and behaviour are implicitly understood as coherently following a single underlying cultural logic, described in terms such as ‘ontology’, habitus, political strategy. We term this implicit model Homo anthropologicus, by analogy with Homo economicus. Both simplify human behaviour and can thus lead to errors in its interpretation. We examine examples of Homo anthropologicus in anthropological approaches to ontology, caste, state evasion, and habitus. We propose that such accounts are erroneous in light of the multiple cognitive systems involved in human thought and behaviour, discussed with close reference to dual process theory. Unlike Homo anthropologicus, Homo sapiens’ behaviour is frequently inconsistent. Whilst anthropologists have long acknowledged this is the case, in practice, as we demonstrate through our examples, inconsistency is frequently seen as a problem to be explained away rather than as a feature of behaviour to be accounted for in its own right. We therefore conclude by calling for a greater degree of methodological reflexivity when making inferences from ethnography

On the correlation gap of matroids

A set function can be extended to the unit cube in various ways; the correlation gap measures the ratio between two natural extensions. This quantity has been identified as the performance guarantee in a range of approximation algorithms and mechanism design settings. It is known that the correlation gap of a monotone submodular function is at least 1-1/e, and this is tight for simple matroid rank functions. We initiate a fine-grained study of the correlation gap of matroid rank functions. In particular, we present an improved lower bound on the correlation gap as parametrized by the rank and girth of the matroid. We also show that for any matroid, the correlation gap of its weighted rank function is minimized under uniform weights. Such improved lower bounds have direct applications for submodular maximization under matroid constraints, mechanism design, and contention resolution schemes

Authoritarian protectionism and the post-neoliberal transition: learning from Stuart Hall’s method of articulation

This article returns to Stuart Hall’s account of Thatcherism to consider the interaction between consent-based hegemonic devices and the structural compulsions that emanate from political-economic transitions. It argues that Hall’s method of articulation offers a middle position in analysing contemporary authoritarian trends, which recognises the role of structural constraints and logics, as well as the discursive construction of ideology in enabling (and inhibiting) hegemony seeking efforts. Building on existing work that has highlighted the distinction between classical neoliberal arguments regarding economic individualism and the trend towards ‘protectionist’ discourses today, where the state is cast as a protector of the in-group against threats, real and imagined, the article outlines how the method of articulation can aid us in making sense of the complexity and non-linearity of the post-neoliberal transition. This framework is then applied to the case study of the British Conservative Party’s trajectory after the 2016 Brexit referendum

Context-aware frequency-embedding networks for spatio-temporal portfolio selection

Recent developments in the applications of deep reinforcement learning methods to portfolio selection have achieved superior performance to conventional methods. However, two major challenges remain unaddressed in these models and inevitably lead to the deterioration of model performance. First, asset characteristics often suffer from low and unstable signal-to-noise ratios, leading to poor learning robustness of the predictive feature representations. Second, existing literature fails to consider the complexity and diversity in long-term and short-term spatio-temporal predictive relations between the feature sequences and portfolio objectives. To tackle these problems, we propose a novel Context-Aware Frequency-Embedding Graph Convolution Network (Cafe-GCN) for spatio-temporal portfolio selection. It contains three important modules: (1) frequency-embedding block that explicitly captures the short-term and long-term predictive information embedded in asset characteristics meanwhile filtering out noise; (2) context-aware block that learns multiscale temporal dependencies in the feature space; and (3) multi-relation graph convolutional block that exploits both static and dynamic spatial relations among assets. Extensive experiments on two real-world datasets demonstrate that Cafe-GCN consistently outperforms proposed techniques in the literature. Keywords: Deep Learning, Graph Neural Networks, Portfolio Choice, Reinforcement Learning

The populist playbook: why identity trumps policy and how democrats can adapt

Despite their poor record in office, populists continue to win elections. Traditional models that assume a narrow definition of self‐interest fail to explain the electoral resilience of populism. Contrary to conventional wisdom, voters typically make choices based on their social identities and support candidates with whom they can identify. Because populism is a variety of identity politics—always based on ‘us’ versus ‘them’—democrats and liberals seeking to counter it should play the identity game in a virtuous way, rather than vilify it or pretend it does not exist. More specifically, they should try to build inclusive identities through a liberal patriotic narrative that fosters a sense of shared fate across diverse groups. This article discusses specific features of this narrative and the supporting conditions it requires to become a plausible alternative to right‐wing populists’ divisive appeals